From Peru back to Brasil, the second time in Brasil on this trip

December 7, 2011

On the 4th of December, we departed from Iquitos to Manaus, a flight of 03:30. This was exactly the day my oldest grandson, Theun, would appear on Dutch TV in a competition for Junior Master Chief Cook. Unfortunately all my efforts to look at an iPod or YouTube movie of his performance failed sofar [maar ik blijf t proberen Theun].

On our way we found many embedded thunderstorms, but Urs dealt with them by slaloming around them like the Swiss Olympic skieer Bernard Russi.

adios Iquitos…

…jungle, water, clouds…

playing with cb’s: thanks to the weather radar…

jungle…

The Airport chart showed the following welcome “Vultures in the vicinity of the airport”.

We had a very nice reception by Swiss Port’s Agent Artur Santos de Araújo.

Today we made an extremely nice trip on the Rio Negro. This river is already so hughe here in Manaus that I am unable to describe that to you very well. I guess the width here is at places already more than 1Nm with a tide of 2-3 knots. Hopefully the photo’s will give at an impression of our impressive views. Later the Rio Negro comes together with the Rio Salimoés forming the Amazone River.

Manaus, Brazil Rio Negro + Rio Solimoés= Amazonas

Resemblance of Newtown on Isle of Wight, UK

I saw a lot of shipping activities so I did alarm Spliethoff right away. My fingers tinckled already to take action and start a Spliethoff subsidiary, especially when I did see a vessel with a ramp called DG Colombia at anchor in the middle of the river. Much to my satisfaction Jan de Korte in Spliethoff gave me all kinds of reassuring message and informed me that mv DG Colombia was under arrest by numerous companies for ten years by now. I remember that our vessels carried plywood from Manaus to USA, but then I believed Manaus was a kind of Indian village (..). Now I discovered a city of more than 2M people.

Harry is again inspecting a few ships…

Maestra Atlantico

…since 10 years arrested…

A modern bridge has been built to connect both sides of the Rio Negro having cost some $400M. It has been opened in November this year when they allowed 90K people. If this is true I do hope someone calculated they must have weighed some 7.000 tons!! The bridge is still there 3,5 km long, 55 metres long, built on 74 columns.

the new Iranduba bridge in Manaus… opened on October 24, 2011

It is very hot here and humid. Yesterday we succeeded to keep Sophie from swimming in the Amazone, but only after our guide said her that there would be no pirhanjas at the end of the day, but … only some small Jacaré’s (alligators).

Tonight, believe it or not, we went to the famous Opera House, which has been transported in it’s entirety on a Shipping Line, giving a weekly service from Liverpool UK to Manaus. (Was it perhaps Blue Funnel line or KNSM?).

Tomorrow we will depart for Belem, Brasil.